Do you remember that commercial from a bunch of years ago? You know the one where the couple is walking through a huge, fancy studio listening to a pretentious architect talk about his accolades. Then they get to his office, he says, "So what can I, do for you (the I is dripping with condescension). They say...

They want to design everything around their Kohler faucet! Who does that?!

​Well as it turns out, we do. We are those people. Only difference is that it wasn't a faucet and it wasn't the whole house.

In 2009 we bought our first home, which I've written about a fair amount on this site. We did a lot of work on that house - including 2 kitchen remodels. The first one was immediately after we bought the house. Our budget was ridiculously tight, and we quickly had the punch-in-the-stomach moment when you realize you have champagne taste and malt liquor budget (a beer budget was a pipe dream).

Even though the budget was so tight (and we could have picked up a sink from HD for about $50), Pancake LOVED farm sinks, so we decided to splurge. Plus, we had just bought an old farm house after all.

After some research, we chose a 30" Franke fireclay farm sink (translated: high end)(pictured in the header). We spent more on our sink (and faucet) than we did on our range. Let that sink in for a second (see what I did there...hilarious, I know).

Given the aforementioned tight budget, we weren't able to rearrange much in the kitchen (we did demo a wall and relocate some radiator pipes), so the new sink and faucet were installed where the old ones were.

A few years later we redid the kitchen again. Even though all of the other materials were changed and upgraded, we used the same sink (and faucet). This time, we did move some stuff around, but decided to keep the sink in +/- the same location. You've seen this version of the kitchen on this site before, but in case you forgot, here it is again:

SO, fast forward a few years. We sell our house, buy some land, and start planning a new house. Pancake says something to me like, "So you know we need to use our sink again, right?" I shouldn't have been surprised. But given what I do for a living, I'm constantly seeing and using new things, so it's natural for me to strive for progress and to push boundaries. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Pancake. How could we use anything other than our 30" Franke fireclay farm sink?! It was poetic. It was an opportunity to use something we already loved, and in a small way tie our past and future together. That was, after all, the sink that Stinky Face and Monkey both took their first baths in.

So unconstrained by the limitations of existing walls, existing plumbing, or an existing house, we literally designed our kitchen around the sink. Here, check out the plan:

And the elevation of the sink cabinets:

Everything revolves around the sink. The cabinets and countertops will be white, and the colors were chosen specifically to tie in to the white of the sink (there are tons of different whites, you know). Once everything is put together at the house, I'll be sure to show you how the sink looks IRL.

Every design idea has to start from somewhere. Ours just happened to be the sink.

Bye for now,
​TJ
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